Robots Are Starting To Take Over Fast Food Jobs

In recent months, some fast food workers have been
staging walk outs, complaining of low pay and the lack of
benefits.

But a new trend suggests that they may face competition that
doesn't care what hours they work, or what they're paid.

Fast food chains in Japan, China and Great Britain have begun
piloting the use of robots to cook meals. And while robots have
been emerging in recent years as a boon for completing
menial tasks like dispensing medicines in hospitals, these
fast food robots are capable of preparing full sushi rolls or
noodle dishes for Asian food outlets. In many cases, customers
complete their orders through a touchscreen, which then alerts
the robot how to prepare the meal. No humans needed.

It stands to reason that American fast food companies will adopt
the robots at some point. One new fast food robot is the
noodle-slicing "Chef Cui" in China, which as the
Associated Press reports, costs restauranteurs 30,000 Chinese
Yuan to buy, or $2,000. Comparatively, a human noodle chef is
paid about $4,700 a year in China, according to the AP.

For Liu Maohu, a noodle restaurant owner in Beijing, the choice
of hiring a robot over a human is easy. "The robot chef can slice
noodles better than human chefs," he told the AP. "And it is much
cheaper than a real human chef."

This is just the beginning, too. A report by the
McKinsey & Company consulting group says that robots will
occupy about one out of every eight commercial service jobs by
2025. And for fields like
manufacturing,
packing,
construction and
maintenance, the figure is roughly one in four. To reach
those numbers, companies will have to invest roughly $1.4
trillion, according to McKinsey.

Robots work on farms
Robots also are being used in the agricultural process. A
group of dairy farmers in NY are using European-made robots
and putting them to work milking herds. And as the
Associated Press recently reported, robots are entering the
"last frontier of agricultural mechanization" -- fruit and
vegetable field work. Previously, robots were not used for such
work, because they weren't sensitive enough with the produce,
which led to undesired bruising. The new robots, referred to by
names like Lettuce Bot, are now endowed with advanced sensors and
high-precision GPS location technologies to ensure the food isn't
damaged.

What will that mean for fast food workers?
In the past year, workers have walked out on their job in
seven cities, demanding that their wages -- they usually earn
salaries close to the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour -- be
doubled to $15 an hour. "The saddest thing about this story is
that probably ten years from now robots will replace human
beings... and low skill workers will have really no place to go,"
John
Curley, a radio host for KIRO-Radio in Seattle, said during a
recent report, which looked back on one of the fast food
protests that took place in his hometown.

In an e-mail to AOL Jobs, Hudson Riehle, a vice president for the
National Restaurant Association (NRA), the fast food trade
association, says robots won't "replace the human factor" in the
industry. He said a "personal touch" is "essential" throughout
the industry. Indeed the NRA projects the industry to continue
growing over the next decade and add roughly a million new
workers by 2023. Currently, there are 13.1 fast food workers in
America, according to the NRA.

Yet on his show Curley raised examples where robots were already
replacing workers. To back up his claim, he pointed to McDonald's
and the Japanese sushi chain, Kura. As he shared on his show,
McDonald's just installed 7,000 touch-screens throughout Europe,
eliminating the need for workers to take customers' orders. Kura,
for its part, has been able to fully eliminate cashiers from
their workflow. In their place, the chain has installed scales in
their branches that customers use to weigh their food. The
customers are then asked to leave the money in a bucket, as if it
were a highway toll.

A San Francisco company, called Momentum Machines, already has
created a robotic assembly line that can assemble 360 hamburgers
an hour. The company says the device could save fast food outlets
$135,000 a year in labor costs, according to
Digital Trends.

What do you think about the use of robots in the fast food
industry? Share your comments below.